DAVISON TOWNSHIP, Mich. – A 60-pound runaway tortoise is back home after disappearing for three days and traveling about a half-mile during that time.

The Flint Journal reports the pet, Franklin, strayed May 29 from his home in Genesee County’s Davison Township and was found June 1.

Owner Chris Breuhan says family members walked his 10-acre property and started putting up flyers to see whether anyone had spotted Franklin. It turns out that the man who found him saw one of the flyers, and Franklin was brought back home.

Breuhan says he was concerned that Franklin might get run over by a vehicle in the rural area, which is 50 miles northwest of Detroit.

“Nothing will eat him,” Breuhan said, noting that: “He’s too big.”

Man burns feces behind Seattle police station

SEATTLE – The No. 1 thing Seattle police officers noticed June 1 at the East Precinct station was a fire in the alley. The next thing was No. 2.

A man told officers he had just relieved himself and was burning the feces. He said he did not know starting a fire was illegal and thought he did nothing wrong.

Because there were nearby trash bins with paper, the 31-year-old man was arrested for reckless burning.

The online police blotter says firefighters put out the fire and hosed down the alley.

A police spokeswoman says there’s nothing in the report to indicate why the man thought burning human waste behind the police station was a good idea, but he was not referred for a mental evaluation.

Man arrested for cursing files free speech lawsuit

HOUSTON, Pa. – A western Pennsylvania man arrested for cursing in front of police has sued, saying his right to free speech was violated.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper reported June 4 that Richard Pustovrh was arguing with his employers in September 2012 and they called the police. Pustovrh lives in Houston, 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

A complaint says Pustovrh used an obscenity to voice his frustration after a Canonsburg police officer warned him not to.

He was handcuffed and later found guilty of disorderly conduct and obscene language. The obscene-language charge was withdrawn when he appealed.

WARREN, Mich. – A Detroit-area man won’t face charges after he failed to immediately tell authorities that his girlfriend had died during a drive to Michigan from Arizona, police say.

Ray Tomlinson, 62, says he kept driving after his 31-year-old girlfriend died. He says he had his 92-year-old mother in the van and wanted to get her home. The Clinton Township man says he also feared arrest and wanted to get the body to a Michigan morgue.

Officers arrived June 4 at his son’s home in Warren to find the corpse in the front passenger seat wearing a seatbelt and sunglasses.

BREMERTON, Wash. – A man suspected of taking $9,200 worth of clubs and other merchandise from the pro shop at Gold Mountain Golf Course had no criminal history, but appears to be addicted to golf, police say.

Bremerton police detectives spotted some of the stolen gear for sale online and arrested the suspect June 4 in Kirkland, Wash.

Police Chief Steve Strachan said robberies are often the result of addictions, but this is the first one police have seen “that looks like a golf addiction.”

The Kitsap Sun reports other property that was stolen from the pro shop on Memorial Day was recovered from the suspect’s apartment.

Vandalized Santa Fe burro gets new tail

SANTA FE, N.M. – A new tail is going on the donkey.

Artist Taylor Mott attached the new tail June 3 to the well-known metal donkey statue in Santa Fe just weeks after it was mysteriously stolen, the Albuquerque Journal reports.

Police have no clues on any possible tail bandits and are offering a $1,000 reward. The metal sculpture stands at one end of Santa Fe’s Burro Alley.

The city of Santa Fe paid around $4,000 to replace the tail, repair three hooves and remove graffiti.

The sculpture by artist Charles Southard is part of the city’s collection of about 75 pieces of public art and was commissioned in 1988. It’s valued at $12,500.

Bear wanders into Wausau courthouse parking garage

WAUSAU, Wis. – An adult bear that wandered into a parking garage beneath the Wausau courthouse has been safely captured and released, deputies in central Wisconsin say.

The bear was discovered early May 30 in an employee parking garage, a Daily Herald Media report says.

Marathon County sheriff’s Lt. Mark Wagers says an animal-control officer subdued the animal with a drugged dart. Officials with the state Department of Natural Resources took it to a wooded area and released it.

Wagers says the bear was an unusual sight, but deputies weren’t fazed. He says they’ve had to deal with a variety of animals that get trapped in the garage somehow, including deer and owls.

Drone delivers drinks at Las Vegas pool parties

LAS VEGAS – Clubbers looking for a buzz might just find their next drink buzzing overhead.

The Marquee Dayclub at The Cosmopolitan casino surprised guests over Memorial Day weekend when it started delivering bottles of alcohol by drone.

Jason Strauss of parent company Tao Group says the flying objects were first brought in to capture aerial footage of the thousands of partiers in the pool area.

But he says operators came up with the idea of booze drops when they found the drone could carry up to 12 pounds.

Marquee will bring out the drone on request from bottle service guests, who sometimes pay tens of thousands of dollars to rent out a cabana and buy food and drink for their friends.

The aircraft is operated by professionals and carries insurance.

Thieves take 13,000 diapers from N.C. nonprofit

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Authorities are searching for whoever made a massive, unauthorized withdrawal from a diaper bank.

The Diaper Bank of North Carolina says 13,000 diapers were stolen recently. The Durham nonprofit provides diapers to struggling families.

Founder and executive director Michelle Old said she went to pick up an order to be distributed to a homeless shelter. She found the order had been strewn across the floor, and various sizes of diapers were missing.

Old said losing the sizes 4 and 5 diapers was especially difficult because babies can stay in them for up to a year and they are hard to keep in stock.

“We already struggle and usually are low on those, but they completely took every diaper,” Old said.

In addition, Old said thieves stole all the diapers from a reserve room that holds extra diapers and that no one outside the organization knows about.

A group of volunteers from a church had been in the building May 30 helping to re-wrap 6,000 packaged diapers for distribution in the community, Old said, adding that the shelves were full then.

Old said some people told her the diapers have turned up at local yard sales, and were being sold on the street.

“A couple of people, since hearing about this, have contacted us and say they have been approached in the downtown area with people selling our diapers. Our tags are still on them,” she said, adding that one woman told her they were going for $4 a package.

The diaper bank was formed one year ago. Old said the goal was to distribute 50,000 diapers in a year, but the organization has handed out 139,000 in 11 months. She said the mission will go on despite the theft.

“The best that we can do is to hope we get the word out and try to fill our shelves again,” Old said. “We’re not in a position where we have any kind of long-running budget. Every penny goes toward buying diapers. This is not going to stop us. We are determined to keep moving forward and keep covering bottoms. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Dock collapses under weight of wedding party

CROSSLAKE, Minn. – It wasn’t just the bride and groom taking the plunge at this central Minnesota wedding.

Dan and Jackie Anderson lined up on a dock with all their groomsmen and bridesmaids for a photo shoot about an hour before the wedding was due to begin in Crosslake during the holiday weekend. But the weight of the 22 people was too much for the dock and it collapsed beneath them into the lake.

A couple of bridesmaids were able to dash off the dock, but the rest ended up in waist- or chest-deep water.

The bride, groom and their entire wedding party were still drying off as the guests arrived for the wedding.

KMSP-TV says despite the lake plunge, the ceremony started just 10 minutes late.

Crosslake is 140 miles north of Minneapolis.

Kidnapper bit by own dog; woman escapes

LAS CRUCES, N.M. – Authorities in southern New Mexico say they apprehended a suspected kidnapper after his own dog turned on him.

Doña Ana County Sheriff’s investigators say they arrested Gabriel Garcia of Las Cruces on May 29 after he was accused of holding a 26-year-old Las Cruces woman against her will, refusing to return her car keys and threatening to kill her. During the ordeal, police say the man ordered his pit bull to bite the woman after she called 911, but the dog attacked him instead.

The woman escaped a second time and called 911 again after the man’s father came home.

Sheriff’s deputies arrested Garcia, charging him with one count of second-degree kidnapping and two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and battery.

Fake officer charged after pulling over real one

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. – A man impersonating an officer face charges after signaling a real detective to pull over on a road in Florida, police say.

St. Johns County authorities say Matthew Michael Lee McMahon, 20, activated a red and blue light June 2 while driving behind an unmarked sheriff’s car. Detective Chance Anderson pulled over and was shocked to see an unknown face behind the wheel of the other car.

First Coast News reports that during his more than 10 years of service the detective has arrested several police impersonators. But none had ever ordered him to stop his car.

McMahon was charged with impersonating an officer and unlawfully displaying blue lights.

He was released June 3 after posting $5,500 in bail.

Man pinned by tree branch credits son, 4, for help

BEAR LAKE TOWNSHIP, Mich. – A man who was pinned under a large tree branch in Michigan’s northwestern Lower Peninsula credits his 4-year-old son’s quick efforts for helping to get him free.

Grant Groenwald told WPBN-WTOM that he was cutting wood May 30 near his home in Manistee County’s Bear Lake Township when a branch rolled on him. His son, Quillan, said he was able to drag a chain saw over to his dad.

“The whole thing rolled down on top of me,” Groenwald said. “It hit me in the shoulder and hit in my elbow and just kind of knocked me off balance.”

Groenwald used the chain saw to cut the branch while he was still pinned underneath, the station reported, and Quillan helped him back to a truck.

BRIDGEWATER, Pa. – A Pennsylvania man has been accused of sneaking into a fire department and taking a woman on a 30-minute joyride in a fire truck.

The Beaver County Times reports that fire officials saw Randy Allen Davidson — who is not a firefighter — enter the Bridgewater Volunteer Fire Department about midnight May 26, grab the vehicle’s keys and drive the truck away with a woman in the passenger seat.

Police say Davidson returned the truck and the keys to their original positions about 30 minutes later.

Davidson, who is 47 and lives in Bridgewater, was charged Sunday with unauthorized use of a vehicle, burglary and other crimes. He remains in jail.

Police use hidden GPS unit to track stolen toy

ATHENS, Ga. – Police used a global positioning device hidden inside a teddy bear to track the toy and apprehend a suspect in the theft.

Athens-Clarke County police say Mid-Atlantic Clothing Recycling had been experiencing thefts of clothing from its collection bin at Georgia Square Mall.

The Athens Banner-Herald reports that a company manager concealed the GPS device inside the bear, placed it in a bag of clothing and tossed it into the collection bin.

Around 5:30 a.m. June 3, the manager called police to report that the teddy bear was on the move. Police said the manager worked with the officer to update the stuffed animal’s location, and a 55-year-old man was stopped and charged with theft by taking, a misdemeanor.

Weather radar picks up grasshopper swarm

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – A mysterious presence that showed up on its radar the last few nights has turned out to be of the insect variety, weather officials say.

A swarm of grasshoppers were detected over Albuquerque’s West Mesa for the fourth night in a row on May 30, the National Weather Service says.

Meteorologist Chuck Jones says the swarm got caught up in winds heading southwest and is being carried as high as 1,000 feet. Jones says the grasshoppers likely hatched weeks ago and are now grown, leading to their ability to trigger radar images.

Officials say last year’s monsoon season and a drier winter created the ideal environment for the grasshoppers to hatch.

Technicians initially thought their equipment was malfunctioning when they saw several unexplained clusters.

Principal gets mariachi serenade in school prank

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – Something seemed a little bit different about Principal John Becchio as he made his rounds at Santa Barbara High School this week.

Was it the trumpeter? The violinist? Or the guitar and guitarron players? Probably all four.

The mariachi group that greeted Becchio in his office Tuesday morning and followed him around for an hour was a prank played by this year’s senior class.

The Santa Barbara Unified School District posted photos and video of the prank on its website this week.

It’s not the first such musical prank. Last year, seniors at West Linn High in Oregon hired a mariachi band to follow their principal around for a few hours.

Police: Teen vandals call 911, are arrested

SANTA FE, N.M. – A group of suspected teen vandals in New Mexico got so rattled when a crime victim chased after them they called 911 and were arrested as a result, police say.

KOAT-TV reports that police say the teens, who range in age from 18 to 15, shot at several windshields with BB guns in a Santa Fe neighborhood, until one victim jumped in his car and followed them.

Officials said the teens called 911, telling the dispatcher the car would speed up whenever they did.

Gabby and Maria Munoz-Robles received the honor by each racking up 4.54 grade point averages at Douglas High School in Minden, about 40 miles south of Reno.

The sisters both plan to attend Notre Dame University in the fall and major in biomedical engineering. But the university is not allowing them to live in the same dormitory.

The sisters told the Record-Courier of Gardnerville that they eventually want to attend graduate school and conduct cancer and arthritis research together.

Both sisters have been involved in track, cross country and band at Douglas High.

It’s the first time in the school’s history that twins have been co-valedictorians.

Robbery suspect befriends victim on Facebook

PORT ORCHARD, Wash. – A 28-year-old man suspected of robbing a woman at a Washington ferry terminal befriended her on Facebook the next day, authorities say.

The Kitsap Sun reports May 31 that Riley Allen Mullins was charged May 30 in Kitsap District Court with second-degree robbery.

Authorities say a woman was sitting at the Bremerton ferry terminal on May 27 using her headphones when she was struck on the head from behind. After being struck, a man grabbed her iPod and purse and ran. She didn’t recognize the man but noticed a tattoo of a triangle on his neck.

The next day, the woman received a Facebook friend notification and recognized the sender as the man who robbed her.

Investigators confirmed the Facebook account belonged to Mullins, and they noted a profile picture of Mullins showing the triangle neck tattoo.

Alligator removed from Mississippi pool

GULFPORT, Miss. – A woman opened the door to her back yard in coastal Mississippi to find that a 5-foot alligator had taken up residence in her pool.

The Sun Herald reported that resident Pam Jones opened her back door June 2 to let out her dog when she spotted the alligator in the pool. The animal was swimming around, then climbed out to sun itself.

Jones got the dog inside, shut the door and called the Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks.

“Our pool motor went out and we’ve been waiting for the new one to come in,” Jones said. “The pool is green because of the motor being out. But (the alligator) did get all of the frogs living in there.”

Wildlife officials told Jones alligators frequently show up in neighborhoods after heavy rain. Adding to their wanderlust: it’s mating season.

Jones said she was worried about harm coming to her dog or her grandchildren, who often play in the pool.

Master Sgt. Barry Delcambre tried to prod the alligator, which retreated to the bottom of the pool. Delcambre and Pvt. Ryan Deschamp pumped the murky water out of the pool to gain an edge in capturing the alligator. After five hours, they got it.

“I’m just glad it’s gone,” Jones said as she looked at the alligator resting in the back of the wildlife officials’ truck, “He’s kind of cute though, isn’t he?”

Delcambre said his office typically gets more calls about alligators after a heavy rain, but more alligators are showing up on the beach this year than in the past decade. The area has been drenched with heavy rain in recent days.

Authorities said the alligator will be moved to an undisclosed location.

Kia hamster actor charged with disability fraud

LOS ANGELES – A man who played a dancing hamster in Kia car commercials and was a backup dancer for Madonna has been charged with California disability fraud.

The California Department of Insurance says Leroy Barnes, 27, of Los Angeles collected $51,000 in workers compensation benefits in 2010 and 2011. Barnes claimed he was disabled when a piece of ceiling fell on him.

But the department says he made at least one Kia commercial, performed in a rap group, assisted in recording the song “Cat Daddy,” and was a backup dancer for Madonna, Kelly Rowland and Chris Brown.

Barnes was arrested last month and is free on bail. He couldn’t be reached for comment June 4.

115-pound woman wins Illinois hot dog eating contest

BLOOMINGDALE, Ill. – Michelle Lesco is petite, but the 115-pound competitive eater still managed to gobble down more than 28 hot dogs — and buns — to win an eating contest in suburban Chicago.

The Arizona native won the May 31 qualifiers for the July 4 hot dog-eating contest at New York’s Coney Island, the Arlington Heights Daily Herald reports

The competition in Bloomingdale, about 20 miles from Chicago, was one of more than 12 preliminary rounds before the main event. Eight people faced off to see who could eat the most hot dogs in 10 minutes.

Lesco set an Illinois record and beat Eric “Badlands” Booker, who gobbled 27 hot dogs. He weighs about four times that of Lesco.

After winning, Lesco said: “I can’t wait to burp.”

Ax-hefting Dutch clown, friends punished for prank

AMSTERDAM – A Dutch court has convicted three men of threatening behavior after one dressed as a clown and chased unsuspecting cyclists with an ax.

The other two filmed the prank and posted it on YouTube, according to a written description of the April 24 event that prosecutors released June 3.

In one part of the footage, which has been removed from the site, a female bicyclist was videotaped approaching the clown’s hiding place in bushes. The prosecutors’ statement says the clown jumped out, screamed at the girl, raised the ax over his head and chased her down the street. Police said a male cyclist also was targeted.

The three men, who were not identified by court officials, defended their actions as humorous. All were sentenced to 40 hours’ community service.

Husband, wife in 80s scare off would-be robber

MILTON, Wash. – A Washington state couple in their 80s say they managed to spook a would-be robber who burst into their home shortly after they returned from a Tacoma casino where they won $500.

KOMO-TV reports Jim and Betty Lilja of Milton wonder whether they were followed home.

They say a man in his 20s barged into their home the night of May 23, with his hand in his pocket. He demanded their money and threatened to shoot. Jim Lilja says he told the intruder he was 85 years old, so “if you want to shoot, go ahead and shoot.”

When the intruder left them alone in the living room to search the bedroom, the couple ran outside, and Jim Lilja decided to push the alarm button on his car key. That sent the robber racing out of the house and into a waiting car — without the couple’s cash.

Milton police are investigating.

South Africa: Helmet cam records robbery

JOHANNESBURG – The video from a South African cyclist’s helmet camera shows a gunman running forward and stealing the bicycle and other possessions with the help of two accomplices, apparently unaware that they were being filmed.

Video footage helped police investigators track and arrest the three suspects, all of them 22 years old, who robbed the cyclist of his mountain bike and cellular telephone, police said June 5. The suspects face a robbery charge and will remain in custody until a court hearing later this month, police Lt. Col. Andre Traut said in a statement.

The robbery occurred May 31 near the town of Somerset West, not far from Cape Town and South Africa’s wine lands. The cyclist, identified in local media as Malcolm Fox, was traveling alone with his camera recording when he was accosted after crossing railway tracks.

In the video, the cyclist immediately gets off his bike, stays calm and cooperates with the thieves, who move quickly to take his possessions before running off and motioning to him to walk in a different direction. At one point, the gunman appears to peer briefly into the camera lens, but makes no move to take the helmet.

Fox, the cyclist, shared the video with police, and it has also been posted on YouTube. Police said the stolen mountain bike and cellular telephone were recovered.

Moose jumps into classroom at Swedish school

HELSINKI – Schoolchildren in western Sweden received a surprise visit during their handicraft class when a moose jumped through the window.

The teacher and a dozen teenagers fled the classroom June 2 to another part of the school and locked themselves into a room to escape the thrashing animal, which had wounded itself on the broken window.

A Goteborg police spokesman told daily Aftonbladet that the young moose “was in a panic and so were the children and teacher.”

Officers broke a window to let the schoolchildren out and later shot the wounded animal that couldn’t find its way out of the school.

Except for the moose, no one was injured during the incident at the high school in Molndal, near the western city of Goteborg.